report released Friday disclosed that savage viruses that shred most human flesh and destroy normal mortal bodies will not even mess with people on American soil. The study, researched at Bolchek University in Ames, Iowa, and financed by the American Family First organization, had been going on for more than five weeks when it made its findings public in Friday's press release.

The news comes as a great relief to weary earth-dwellers in the United States, as word came of a deadly Ebola-like virus continuing its rampage through Angola, some country most Americans aren't familiar with in Africa. The World Health Organization (WHO, sometimes known as the Teenage Wasteland Group) announced shortly before the Bolchek press release that 173 people in Angola have died from the virus known as Marburg, and four more non-U.S. countries have been placed on the warning list.

News media assured American citizens the country will be alright, since they have something of a track record for surviving problems without U.S. intervention, and have even survived some caused by them.

The Bolchek study findings, however, provided a large relief from worry about viral invasions by other dangerous contagions such as Marberg and Ebola, including CCHF, Dengue, SARS, Lassa fever, and the Kinks. According to research, done in Bolchek's famous $3 million Sid Caesar Facility, virus cells, when given the choice between healthy cells of different nationalities, will always shy away from American DNA.

"It's totally awesome," said project head, 18-year-old super-genius Nills Van Raftan. "We stumbled on it a bit by accident. We were testing the effect of Ebola on the blood cells of African mice—since we wanted to save the American mice for better experiments—when one of the team members had a nosebleed and accidentally contaminated the sample. Imagine our surprise when we saw the Ebola contagions were scared shitless of messing with the American cells. And who can blame 'em?"

If the results are verified, and frankly nobody's doubting the outcome of a second test much, it answers a great number of questions for the world's nerdy virus-following community. Such as why have SARS and Mad Cow and other disease variants been too chickenshit to mess with the U.S. of A.?

"For any number of reasons," posited spindly weakling Van Raftan, "virus cells simply will not infect American cells, at least those of the United States. It could be because U.S. cells don't brook backtalk from foreign viruses. But, if my personification of American cells is way off, it might also be because viruses know that if they mess with American cells, they're risking a massive investment of money in destroying their asses. They can work their way through Africa, Asia, and even Eastern Europe for years, and we'll leave them alone—but first time they start infecting Americans on American soil, they're on our list. Companies even drop all the new dick pill technology they're working on and concentrate on the hot new market for pharmaceuticals to keep Americans healthier than foreigners."

When asked about AIDS, a virus long plaguing even American citizens, Van Raftan made a squeal, smiled sheepishly with his braces on display, and shrugged. "I don't know. Maybe some viruses are retarded. But it does give us something to work on when we get frustrated with erection research."

n the wake of the pope’s alleged death last week, the Vatican has released John Paul II’s will and personal diary to the media. Among the juicy tidbits revealed with the publication of the papal diary was the 84-year-old man’s dying wish that the bloodthirsty media would please, please, please keep their grubby mitts off his motherloving diary.

Published in newspapers, and on websites and Happy Meal boxes around the globe in over 90 languages, Catholics and heathens alike thrilled to the pope’s private inner thoughts and the great man’s eloquent musings this week, drinking in the pope’s thoughts on the nature of privacy and his joy at having this one small respite from a life lived on such a public stage.

Hounded all his life by an overzealous media desperate to know what made the pope tick, John Paul II poured his thoughts into the small, leather-bound volume in a scrawl that some have called “Pope-script.� Among the nuggets revealed with the diary’s publication are the details of the pope’s third-grade crush on Margo Holzarian from the Ukraine, and his strange, life-long fascination with American actress Mariel Hemmingway.

“Thank God no one is ever going to read this diary,� the Pope wrote in one of his last entries, dated March 2005. “It is only through this precious cove of privacy that I cling to my very humanity.� According to various sources, the pope misspelled “humanity� in the original text, but newspaper editors have universally agreed that it is highly unlikely the pope was clinging to a humanatee.

Many readers have been especially touched by the earliest entries in the diary, which date back to the pope’s youth.

“Dear diary: Man, being the pope is hard. I miss my mom and dad, and sometimes I just want to go home. Everybody says I’ll get over it though, once I make some new friends. Well, gotta go. Love, The Pope.�

Some less-scholarly Catholics have been equally surprised to learn that John Paul II was referred to as “the pope� even as a small boy, which made for several humorous anecdotes about grade school roll-call.

Garnering somewhat less attention has been the publication of John Paul II’s last will and testament, which some Catholics awaited with great suspense over who would inherit the pope’s collection of pointy hats. In the end, however, it turned out that the pope’s will was written in Polish, so the Vatican instead handed out his belongings on a “first come, first serve� basis to the assembled masses.

“This is fucking awesome,� raved German tourist Himmel Blaus. “I got the pope’s toenail clippers and a pair of boxers with the dude’s initials on them!�

“I got the pope’s soap! The pope’s soap on a rope is dope!� shouted another ecstatic inheritor, dashing out of the room, apparently in a hurry to bathe.

Publishers worldwide are currently in negotiations for the hardcover publishing rights to the pope’s diary, though as of yet, none have thought to tap the gold mine that is the commune’s recent “Pope’s Diary Mad Libs� feature.

Well well well, I have come to learn a few things about myself in these past few weeks, but nothing more important than this: I will never smoke PCP again. Unless it's free.

I've spent the past six weeks roaming the Earth, which later turned out to be my apartment, with my invincible quarter-sized right hand midget, Nevil. And because I spent most of my nearly two-month binge higher than Rodney King on payday, I was able to discover two important things.

One, I cannot stop a car moving at top speed with my face, as I may have wildly boasted in the past. And secondly, but most importantly, I am a master robot builder.

Now I use the word master somewhat loosely, because I've only built one. But oh what a robot she... he... s/h/it was.

The idea came to me while smoking pure PCP out of a trumpet I found in the trash, and watching that futuristic movie where Will Smith hunts down robots while wearing old school Converse sneakers. Now, I don't know if you've ever worn a pair of those, but whether you have or not, take it from me: They suck fuckin' whale dork. I say the future's looking pretty goddamned bleak when they can build robots that look and move like humans, but still can't make a pair of comfortable basketball shoes.

It was right about this time that I jumped up out of the bathtub and exclaimed "Holy shit!" That happens all the time, but this time in particular I capped off the gesture by dashing naked into the kitchen, to begin immediate construction of the Mickey Hanes 1.0.

Now the common moronic belief about robot construction is that you need a metallic skeletal frame surrounded by complex electrical wiring, a state of the art CPU brain, and some kind of gelatin-like skin to cover the whole mess. I'm here to tell you, that's a load of bullshit.

I made mine almost completely out of common household items: some toilet paper rolls, a few empty potato chip bags, and a ton of spare parts I found attached to my neighbor Tom's Mustang. You'd be amazed at all the parts that aren't being used under the hood and on the undercarriage. That's right; my baby is running on a turbocharged V-6. And just to make it super-bitchin, I sawed the head off my old NES robot and crafted it into the ever-vigilant crest of Mickey Hanes 1.0.

My original plan for building a high-tech computer brain out of an X-box and a Black & Decker toaster oven was cruelly kicked in the pills by the news that my neighbor's X-box had a porno stuck in it and some kind of heinous weasel had taken up residence in my own toaster oven. Always thinking, I ended up just sticking the antenna from my old RC car behind the robot's chrome-plated bumper shoulders. No points for style, but hey, fuck that.

When I fired up the robot for the first time, I almost dropped the RC controller, because it instantly snatched up Nevil and stuffed him in a shoebox in 2.3 seconds flat. I know this because I timed it several times afterwards.

I didn't know midgets had collapsible skeletons.

After several hours of laughing at Nevil trying to eek his way out of that shoebox before sicking the robot on him again, my face started hurting, so I decided to make some adjustments.

I tweaked a few wires here and there, played with a crankshaft or two, then yanked the ripcord to turn the robot on again.

I don't know what the hell I did that time, but when the V-6 started up, Mickey Hanes 1.0 made a sound like a roaring lion on angel dust. That was right before it made a bee-line straight through the front door, and hauled ass completely out of the range of my RC controller.

I vaguely remember screaming a semi-intelligible order at Nevil to stop that thing, but the robot mowed over that worthless, pint-sized meatsack like he wasn't even there. Nevil at least had the good sense to cling to the robot's underbelly and let it drag him through the door, and out of kicking range, before it peeled out on his face and left him in a smoking midget divot on the front lawn. I haven't seen the robot since. Nevil, unfortunately, hung around until I dug him out of the lawn.

Understandably furious at his letting-my-robot-escape insubordination, I hung Nevil upside down out of my window with piano wire for three days, by which time there was a family of birds nesting in his pants. Teach that goddamn twerp to disobey my orders.

In closing, wherever Mickey Hanes 1.0 is, I hope he's happy and doing good things, or at least running over important shit in that berserk way of his. But hey, no use crying over spilled milk, so off to my next task. I just tricked Nevil into eating two pounds of Alka-Seltzer by telling him the stuff will make him invisible. This is going to be awesome. Later.

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